Tiny Tents Occupy Civic Center Plaza

“We’d better get in our cars and get out of Dodge – there’s quite a group of people southbound on 3rd,” a woman commented to her friend as they hustled through the public square and into the Civic Center Plaza building at around a quarter past 5 this evening.

Actually there were a few dozen of them heading north, chanting the familiar “We are, the 99 percent!” refrain. A press release last night promised that “at least 50 members of Occupy San Diego are going to set up tents in the Civic Center Plaza on Monday at 5 p.m.”

The group, a few minutes behind schedule, poured into the plaza to the cheers of 80 or so occupiers already assembled, and to the bemusement of an equal-sized contingent of police and media members. Many raised miniature tent replicas in triumph, measuring about 12” across by 8” high.

“These tents are symbols of our re-occupation,” the group mic checked, using the trademark call-and-repeat form of Occupy amplification. “We place these tents here in the spirit of the Hoovervilles of the 1930s,” in reference to the shanty towns that housed many homeless during the Great Depression.

Cheers erupted when Assistant Chief of Police Boyd Long agreed to allow the symbolic “tents” to remain in the plaza as the group dispersed into committee meetings, marking a change in policy that had previously threatened occupiers with arrest or citation for leaving personal property on the ground anywhere within the plaza.